Abroad

I’m going to go catch a plane to Copenhagen right now. In two days I’ll be in Amsterdam and I can’t possibly tell you how excited I am to walk around calling myself Ludacris while yelling “WE IN THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT!” at everyone.

Brb.

Retail

I went shopping yesterday and, to my great joy, I discovered there seems to be only one thing retailers can agree on: new music costs $10.

For example, at my local Western Beef, Kellogg’s Special K is just under six dollars but at Target it’s $2.79. Go up the block to my local bodega and they’ll sell the same cereal to you for $6. Speaking of the local bodega, you could buy a pint of Haagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream there for $6.50. However, at Target, B&J sells for around $4 and at Western Beef B&J and H-D generally average around $5. It depends on the flavor and H-D usually costs 20 cents more, but I honestly don’t care because that still makes it $1.50 less than the bodega. Sure, that’s not much but with the amounts I’ve been eating recently, that $1.50 adds up. Yet, somehow my gym activities prevent the calories from adding up. Mmmmmm, Everything but the…

But with all these differing prices on the same shit, Best Buy and Target both sell new music for just about $10 during the first week music’s out. That’s pure, unadulterated awesome: as long as you keep up on new music releases you can get a physical copy of all the music you love that won’t disappear when your hard drive and iPod die at the same time. This way I avoid the minor guilt of doing something illegal like downloading it for free. I also get to flip through the booklet instead of scrolling through it. Yes, I’m that guy who likes the booklets; otherwise, I would have no idea that Steve Winwood played keyboards on the original recording of “Voodoo Chile” or that John Mayer’s “Crossroads” is, as I suspected, a cover of the Robert Johnson song (although obviously influenced by the Cream version).

“As long as I could buy records and have a place to live and eat, I was happy.”–Duke Robilard

Get like me and stay up on your new music, son. Tell ya moms I’mma call later.

Teh Dreamz

Where the fuck was I when this happened? More importantly, why didn’t anyone tell me?

Perhaps a preface is in order. A reading from the book of Hov: “Of course I love you… I love all y’all.” –Book 6, The Blueprint; Chapter 4, “Girls, Girls, Girls.” I’ve been youTube-ing a bunch of The-Dream’s work and it’s like he took this to heart and wrote two albums where he basically says the same thing in as many different ways as possible. I can get behind that.

Did you see the remix, too?!? I fucking love magazines–specifically, Esquire–and of course they make Ludacris magazine look like Esquire. And then Luda lays not only the best verse on the song but also does the intro. Sure, DJ Khaled sounds like an idiot, but that’s his thing. I also understand that, approximately, the first four lines of Rick Ross’ verse are known in Spain as “basura,” but, at the end of the day, Mr. Ross is a signed rapper and I’m just a dude who wants to buy The-Dream’s new album. That said, I respect Mr. Ross for getting paid to place sentences in logical order and make them rhyme.

Oh, the things I’ll write.

(P.S. Slightly related, the clue for 35-Down in the crossword puzzle a week ago last Wednesday was “two-cup item” and the answer was “Bra.” I laughed out loud and scared the shit out of like three or four people sitting next to me on the subway. Worth it.)